The Faculty of Education and Psychology at University of Isfahan, established in 1978, is a leading institution for teacher training and psychological research with state-of-the-art facilities including the Child Development Lab, Cognitive Neuroscience Center, and Educational Technology Innovation Hub.
Esfijani, A., Hussain, FarookhKhadeer, Chang, Elizabeth
The main purpose of this study is to investigate, from a theoretical point of view, virtual universities in comparison with Social Networking Services (SNS). The theoretical framework constitutes of the Human Motivation Theory (HMT) and the Human Factors (HF) in which Facebook as the most popular SNS is compared with virtual university in general. The main features of these technologies were compared in order to consider whether they comply with mentioned theories. Using an exploratory research methodology, this study concludes that SNSs are more adopted with HMT than virtual university. In the other word, Facebook applications as the most popular virtual community with over 500,000,000 users worldwide, is more compliant with HMT to gratify users' needs. Also, from the perspective of human factors, it is more successful than the virtual university.
Dalgleish, T., Taghavi, R., Neshat doost, H.T., Moradi, A., Yule, W., Canterbury, R.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines (00219630)38(5)pp. 535-541
The investigation of cognitive content and processes in childhood anxiety and depression has lagged behind similar research in the adult population. What studies do exist have largely restricted themselves to examining the nature of the thoughts that anxious and depressed children report. There is almost no research examining the ways in which anxious and depressed children perceive, attend to, remember, or think and make judgements about, emotional material. The present study investigated the subjective probability judgements that anxious and depressed children make concerning future negative events. Subjects generated probability estimates either for themselves or for other children for a range of events on a visual analogue scale. Events were either physically-threat-related or socially-threat-related. The results revealed no differences of interest with respect to type of threat but interesting differences between the groups with respect to reference. Depressed subjects estimated that events were equally likely to happen to themselves as to other children whereas both the controls and anxious children estimated that negative events were more likely to happen to others than to themselves, with this effect being stronger in the anxious group. These results are discussed in the context of the adult literature and also the limited literature on emotion-related cognitive processing in children.
Dalgleish, T., Neshat doost, H.T., Taghavi, R., Moradi, A., Yule, W., Canterbury, R., Vostanis p., P.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines (00219630)39(7)pp. 1031-1035
Previous research into subjective probability estimates for negative events revealed that depressed children estimated events as equally likely to happen to themselves as to other children. In contrast, both controls and anxious children estimated that negative events were more likely to happen to others than to themselves. The present study followed up this finding by investigating the subjective probability judgements concerning future negative events generated by children and adolescents who have recovered from depression. Subjects generated probability estimates either for themselves or for other children for a range of negative events on a visual analogue scale. The results revealed that both recovered depressed and matched control groups estimated negative events as significantly more likely to happen to others than to themselves. It was also found that the recovered depressed subjects estimated that negative events were less likely overall, compared to the controls. These results are discussed in the context of the adult literature.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology (0021843X)107(4)pp. 642-650
An experiment was conducted to examine memory for emotional trait adjectives in depressed children and adolescents. Two groups of children and adolescents, clinically depressed participants and non-clinical controls, were compared on computerized versions of recall and recognition memory tasks. Three groups of words (positive trait adjectives, negative trait adjectives, and categorized neutral words) were used in the experiment. Results showed that the depressed group recalled significantly more negative adjectives than positive adjectives, whereas the control group recalled the same number of positive and negative adjectives. This effect was predicted by the association between age and level of depression, with the depression- related bias becoming stronger with age. Signal detection analysis revealed that the depressed group did not show any bias in the recognition task. The findings are discussed with respect to cognitive theories of depression with consideration of the developmental implications.
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (15732835)27(3)pp. 215-223
Recent research has indicated that anxious adult and child patients and high trait-anxious adults selectively shift attention toward threatening stimuli. The present study extends this research and investigates the content-specificity of the effects in clinically anxious and mixed anxious- depressed children and adolescents. Twenty four generally anxious patients, aged 9 to 18, 19 mixed anxious-depressed patients, and 24 normal controls were comparable with respect to age, sex, verbal IQ, and vocabulary level. The participants carried out an attentional deployment task in which probe detection latency data were used to determine the distribution of visual attention for threat-related and depression-related material. The results showed that clinically anxious children, relative to controls, selectively allocated processing resources toward threat stimuli. However, mixed anxious- depressed children, relative to controls, did not show any attentional bias towards either threat- or depression-related stimuli. Preliminary data on age and gender differences are also presented. The results of this study are discussed in the light of previous research.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines (00219630)40(3)pp. 357-361
Adult post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients often report a wide range of cognitive problems in memory, concentration, attention, planning, and judgement. Evaluation of these cognitive aspects of PTSD in adults has helped to define the nature of the disorder. However, there is a paucity of such work in younger subjects. This study has employed the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT) to examine cognitive factors in children and adolescents with PTSD. Eighteen child and adolescent patients with PTSD and 22 control subjects completed the test. PTSD subjects showed poorer overall memory performance compared with controls. Specifically, they were worse on the prospective and orientation items of the RBMT. The results are discussed in the light of research on everyday memory in adults with PTSD.
Background. Investigators have used various experimental paradigms such as the Stroop colour naming test to study how adults with different emotional disorders process emotional information. However, to date, little research has been carried out on younger subjects. Method. In the current experiment, children and adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and control subjects aged 9-17 years, participated in a modified Stroop colour naming task. Results. The results indicated that the children and adolescents with PTSD showed increased Stroop interference for trauma-related material relative to neutral words and to the performance of the controls. Conclusions. These findings indicate that attentional bias to trauma-congruent information is a function of PTSD in young age groups. The results are discussed with respect to the literature on information processing in PTSD.
Journal of Traumatic Stress (15736598)12(4)pp. 663-671
Investigators have used various experimental paradigms to study how individuals with different emotional disorders process emotional information. However, little research has been done on relatives of individuals with emotional disorders, despite developments in the area of emotional contagion. In the current experiment, children of adults with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (n = 18) and control participants (n = 21), ages 9-17 years, participated in a modified Stroop color-naming task. The results indicated that the children of adults with PTSD showed increased Stroop interference for threat-related relative to neutral words and to the performance of the controls. These findings are discussed with respect to the literature on information processing in PTSD and emotional contagion in families.
Cognitive theories of anxiety based on adult data predict that individuals vulnerable to anxiety should show threat-related interpretations of ambiguous material and it is proposed that this is an important maintaining factor in anxiety disorders. In the present study, interpretation of ambiguous emotional/neutral information was examined in child and adolescent anxious patients. Two groups of participants, anxious patients (n = 17) and healthy controls (n = 40), were presented with a series of homographs, each with a threatening and a neutral interpretation. For each homograph, the participants were asked to construct a sentence using the homograph. Anxious children and adolescents produced significantly more sentences consistent with threatening homograph interpretations and less consistent with neutral interpretations than did normal controls. Regression analyses revealed no relationship between age and this interpretive bias. Preliminary developmental and theoretical implications are discussed.
Dalgleish, T., Moradi, A., Taghavi, R., Neshat doost, H.T., Yule, W., Canterbury, R.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines (00219630)41(8)pp. 981-988
Research with clinically anxious adults has revealed that they estimate future negative events as far more likely to occur, relative to healthy controls. In addition, anxious adults estimate that such events are more likely to happen to themselves than to others. Previous research with anxious children and adolescents, in contrast, has revealed no increased probability estimates for negative events, relative to controls, and the events were rated as more likely to happen to others than to the self. The present study followed up these discrepant findings by investigating probability judgements concerning future negative events generated by children and adolescents who had actually experienced an extreme negative event and who met criteria for a diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Control groups comprised a group of healthy participants, and a group of healthy participants whose parents had experienced a trauma and who met criteria for PTSD. The results revealed no overall differences between the clinical group and the controls. However, children and adolescents with PTSD estimated all negative events as significantly more likely to happen to others than to themselves, with this other-referent bias being strongest for events matched to their trauma. In contrast, the two control groups exhibited an other-referent bias for physically threatening events but not for socially threatening ones. Developmental analyses indicated that the strength of the relationship between anxiety and elevated judgements about future negative events declined with age in the control participants but that there was no significant relationship in the groups who had been exposed to trauma. The findings are discussed in the context of the literature on information processing biases and PTSD.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines (00219630)41(3)pp. 363-368
The present study utilised a cognitive paradigm to investigate attentional biases in clinically depressed children and adolescents. Two groups of children and adolescents - clinically depressed (N = 19) and normal controls (N = 26) - were asked to complete a computerised version of the attentional dot probe paradigm similar to that used by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata (1986). Results provided no support for an attentional bias, either toward depression-related words or threat words, in the depressed group. This findings is discussed in the context of cognitive theories of anxiety and depression.
Journal of Anxiety Disorders (08876185)14(5)pp. 521-534
Studies with adult participants with emotional disorders have revealed an explicit memory bias in favor of recalling negative emotional information, particularly if the information is related to the participants' emotional concerns. This process was investigated in a preliminary study with children and adolescents with posttraumatic stress disorder and control participants. Participants were presented with sets of negative, neutral, and positive words and asked to recall them after a short retention interval. Posttraumatic stress disorder participants showed poorer overall memory performance compared with control participants. They also showed a bias in favor of recalling negative information, but there was no evidence of any specificity beyond this for threat- related material. Regression analyses revealed no relationship between mood, memory bias, and age. Results are discussed in terms of the adult literature and with respect to issues of the developmental continuity of posttraumatic stress disorder. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.
Background. The present study examined biases in visual attention for emotional material in children and adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and healthy controls. Methods. The participants carried out an attentional deployment task in which probe detection latency data were used to determine the distribution of visual attention for threat-related and depression-related material. Results. The results showed that children and adolescents with PTSD, relative to controls, selectively allocated processing resources towards socially threatening stimuli and away from depression-related stimuli. This attentional avoidance of depression-related information in the PTSD participants declined with age. Conclusions. The results of the study are interpreted as a consolidation and extension of previous research on attentional bias and emotional disorder in younger participants.
Dalgleish, T., Taghavi, R., Neshat doost, H.T., Moradi, A., Canterbury, R., Yule, W.
Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (15374424)32(1)pp. 10-21
This study investigated theoretical claims that different emotional disorders are associated with different patterns of cognitive bias, both in terms of the cognitive processes involved and the stimulus content that is preferentially processed. These claims were tested by comparing clinically anxious (generalized anxiety disorder [GAD], posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) and clinically depressed children and adolescents on a range of cognitive tasks measuring attention, memory, and prospective cognition, with both threat-related and depressogenic stimulus materials. The results did reveal some relative specificity of processing in that the anxious participants exhibited a greater selective attentional bias for threat relative to depressogenic material with no such difference being apparent in the depressed sample. However, this bias was only clear-cut on a dot-probe measure of attentional processing and not on a modified Stroop measure, and indeed threat-related bias on the 2 tasks was uncorrelated. On the prospective cognition task, anxious participants exhibited an other-referent bias in their risk estimations regarding future negative events that was absent in the depressed sample. No specificity effects were evident on the memory task. The results are discussed in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of carrying out direct comparisons across groups and tasks versus drawing conclusions from overall patterns across multiple studies.
British Journal of Clinical Psychology (01446657)42(3)pp. 221-230
Objectives. Research investigating attentional bias for emotional information using the modified Stroop task in younger anxious populations has produced equivocal results. The present data investigated the replicability in younger participants of the prototypical adult finding of Mathews and MacLeod (1985) with patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Method. A sample of 19 child and adolescent patients with GAD and 19 controls completed the modified Stroop paradigm with threat, depression-related, positive and neutral words. Results. The data revealed a selective Stroop interference effect for negative emotional information in the GAD patients, relative to the performance of the controls. Conclusions. The results provide evidence of a modified Stroop effect for negative emotional material in children and adolescents with GAD, suggesting that modified Stroop processing in younger generally anxious populations broadly mirrors the profile of results in adults.
Information Sciences and Technology (17355206)22(3)pp. 33-54
The growing number of specialized, scientific journals has made fast, batch identification and retrieval of articles a daunting task for the researchers. Furthermore, the rising cost of journal subscriptions, has deprived many researchers and even small libraries of individual subscriptions. The present research was conducted to assess the importance of establishing a full text database of Persian articles at the library of the faculty of law and political sciences in Shiraz University from the standpoint of the graduate and undergraduate students. Findings demonstrated that the average usefulness of the full-text article databases in students' view, was rated "high", given their experience with databases. About 61% of the respondents stated their "high" and "very high" approval for article digitization. Given the advantages offered by full-text article databases, the approval rating of the respondents have been "high.
